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Episode 102: Political Theology Reimagined: Dr. Joel Lawrence on “Sabbath Politics” in a Polarized World
Episode 1027th November 2024 • Pivot Podcast • Faith+Lead
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In this thought-provoking episode of the Pivot Podcast, Dr. Joel Lawrence, president of the Center for Pastor Theologians, offers a fresh perspective on political theology and how churches can navigate our politically polarized landscape. Introducing the concept of "Sabbath politics," Dr. Lawrence challenges us to reimagine the church's role in society, shifting from a posture of control to one of trust in God's rule.

Drawing insights from his study of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the early chapters of Genesis, Dr. Lawrence provides practical guidance for church leaders seeking to apply political theology in fostering unity and faithful discipleship in divisive times. This episode is essential listening for anyone grappling with the intersection of faith, politics, and ecclesial identity in today's world.

Resources Mentioned:

  • Center for Pastor Theologians 
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer's works, particularly "Discipleship" and "Life Together"
  • James Davison Hunter's book "Democracy and Solidarity"

Mentioned in this episode:

Stepping Up to Supervision

Transcripts

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Terri Elton: I've been perplexed by humanity, and I have found myself actually believing if one person, one or the other, we would save ourselves or not. Right. And I'm like, I'm asking politics to do what I profess God has already done. And it turned the corner to exactly what you were saying. Is that what does it mean to be a person of faith in this time and place, with or without the support of government or political leaders or agencies or business? Right. Go any part of our society. And what really was fun for me in that conversation was to see them opening an imagination, like you had said about, oh, what does it mean to be a person of faith, to love God and my neighbor because they literally cared about deeply about their neighbor, and they just only saw the church structure or the political structure. I'll use those two as the only means of ways of actually loving their neighbor, rather than the call of them. All right. Of us all. Well, hello everyone. Welcome to the Pivot Podcast, the podcast where we explore how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Terry Elton and today I'm joined by my co-host Dwight Zscheile.

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Dwight Zscheile: Well, it's election season, which I don't need to remind you about. And churches across America are struggling to stay grounded in Christ and unified across a polarized political landscape. Politics is the new religion. It's often said in a culture in which religious engagement, at least institutionally, has declined, and all kinds of energies for identity, belonging, purity and transcendence are being channeled into politics. How might churches navigate these waters faithfully? Well, we are very excited today to welcome Doctor Joel Lawrence to the show. Joel is the president of the center for Pastor Theologians. He's a scholar of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He's a pastor and professor who has been wrestling with questions of faith and politics for a long time. One of our key pivots that we talk about in this show is a pivot from focusing on institutional membership to focusing on discipleship. And so we've asked Joel to help us think about what it means to be the church as a community of disciples living into God's kingdom, as we grapple with today's divided world.

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Terri Elton: One note we are recording this before the November 5th election, and yet this will be aired two days after on the 7th of November. So I will be addressing the current times and what we're experiencing. We'll be doing it in general terms without the specific knowing what the outcome of the election coming up is. So in that context, Joel, welcome to the Pivot podcast.

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Joel Lawrence: Thanks. It's really great to be on with you guys.

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Dwight Zscheile: So Joel, tell us a bit about why you got interested in political theology and how it relates to another concern of yours, which is ecclesiology.

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Joel Lawrence: Yeah. So I, I didn't set out to be a political theologian. I don't even know that I officially am in that I, I didn't do my, my doctoral work or, or kind of professional study in political theology, as you mentioned, my doctoral work was on on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And the question that was really driving me there and that has continued to drive me is the ecclesiology. The question, the what does it mean to be the church? And how can the church faithfully live out our mission and our witness in, in this world? And and so I really am driven by the ecclesiology question. But if you've been awake over the last 10 to 20 years and you're asking ecclesiology questions, it's not very far until you need to start asking political theology questions. And kind of really the driving concern that I have had, the driving question for me has been what what would it look like for the church in the United States? And that's a very broad category We get nuanced about different ways that this plays out in different directions. But but what would it look like for the for the church in the United States to be to be more rooted and grounded in our ecclesial identity, to recognize ways that that that our identity has been has been formed by the the political culture around us. And what would a renewed imagination of the church's political mission look like in order for us to to better represent the Kingdom of God in this world, while we're engaged with the political structures of the age, but also recognize that we are, as the New Testament calls us, as Paul refers to us, we're ambassadors of a of a different kingdom. We are. We are those who belong to a heavenly kingdom, who have been sent to earthly kingdoms as representatives of that heavenly kingdom, and our engagement with the politics of the world around us should reflect that. That ambassadorial identity. So I'm really more of an ecclesiologist, more driven by the questions of the church and the church's identity. But but through that, it has been kind of my way into a deeper political theology and, and thinking about the ways that the church has been been influenced by, captured by narratives that maybe are pointing us in some different directions in terms of our our political engagement.

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Terri Elton: Thanks. You've been working on a concept called Sabbath politics. Tell us a little bit about what you mean by that, and how is it helpful for us as we think about this time today?

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Joel Lawrence: Yeah. So that that really has been driven by this, by this question of of the church's identity and really the church's imagination. So kind of behind Sabbath politics was some study I was doing as a pastor. Shepherding my church through this would have been in the lead up to the 2016 election and through to the the 2020 election, kind of doing some, some pretty deep work pastorally around what it means to disciple a church to to shepherd a church through the the kind of cultural divide that we have all been been living through. Um, and kind of came to some conclusions that we didn't have the right theological political imagination to navigate the challenges that we had, the reason that we're being divided so deeply, the reason why the church so often reflects the the culture around us is because we've kind of borrowed our social identity from the culture. And we've allowed that to to shape who we are and some fairly profound ways. And so we need some some different frameworks for the way that we think about the church's life in the world and our political mission in the world. And so as I started to kind of deep, more deeply reflect on that and study scripture, I just went back to all the way to the beginning, and I was thinking about what is the political vision at the very beginning of the scriptures, um, and reading Genesis one and into Genesis two, I came to the conviction that Sabbath is the primary political vision of the scriptures, that as God is creating the heavens and the earth. In Genesis chapter one, he's ordering the political life of the universe. Um, think about politics there as a, you know, kind of high, uh, high level, 20,000, 30,000 foot view politics, not about not about policies or polls or or partisans, but politics about is about how we organize life in society with each other. And so what we see in Genesis one is God's ordering life in society. He's ordering the universe so that we could dwell with God and with our neighbor in right relationship with each other. That's a that's a political action. So God's creating a political world where our lives are ordered together. And then the capstone of that is Genesis two one through three of the Sabbath. And God. God rests on the seventh day not because God is physically tired. God rests on the seventh day because all is as it should be. The world is rightly ordered. Where God is acknowledged as the Lord, the creator of the heavens and the earth. And we under God's lordship are to dwell in just and peaceful relationships with our neighbors. So Sabbath is a vision of political order in which our life is ordered with God and with our neighbor. That that in that Sabbath vision, in that seventh day Sabbath, which which was intended to be the reality for for all of eternity in that seventh day there would be political structures, there would be ordering, there would be economic structures, but they would be just structures. They would be structures that that are that contribute to the flourishing of of human life in our life with God and neighbor. And so I've been kind of working on that concept, continuing to work it out, writing here and there about it. And again, the kind of idea there is to bring a biblical vision that maybe isn't what we normally think about when we think about politics. Bring that into the church, bring that into our hearts and our minds, and allow that to to reframe our understanding of what it means to be the people of God who are here as Sabbath representatives, who are here as ambassadors of that Sabbath rule of God. And so my intent with that has been to just bring that into some conversations and hopefully help that to spur our imagination around what what it could look like for us as the church to be present in the world, but to be present differently and not be present in a way that's so consumed by the, the, the culture's conversations, but where we could be present to have different conversations and speak differently to the culture.

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Dwight Zscheile: So I'd love to follow up on that. It's a beautiful vision and in a very different one, I think, than how people typically imagine this conversation. One of the things that strikes me about it is that if we are leaning into the posture of Sabbath, we are trusting God's rule as our fundamental kind of disposition to to the world and toward God. And as I look at the current landscape of the church, I see a lot of churches and church leaders doing something very different, which is feeling like we have to sort of seize agency and control, whether it be over society, the nation in various forms, left and right wing forms. And so I wonder if you could just think with us a little more about how that posture of Sabbath in which God is so clearly in charge? I mean, one of the great lessons of Sabbath, of course, is that when you cease your activity, you have to trust that it's not all up to you and that you're not actually holding up the universe that God is. But so. But speak to us a little more about that, that shift in posture.

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Joel Lawrence: Yeah, I think that's that's absolutely right. And I think I think that the concept of posture is, is really important to this. I think in my read of of Sabbath, right. If the seventh day Sabbath was God's intent for the entirety of creation for, for all of eternity, that that's what God created us to know. That's what God created us to dwell in. There would be work in Sabbath. It's not that if God created, if we never rejected the Sabbath of Genesis three never happened. Um, it's not that we we wouldn't work. We wouldn't build structures. It's that we would do that. But those things would be ordered under God's rule and under God's reign. And so as we would place ourselves under God's lordship, that our relationships would be ordered in a way that would not be competitive relationships where God would be the provider, where God would be our protector. And that's the rest of Sabbath. That's the the soul rest. That's the spiritual rest. That's the flourishing rest that we were created to, to live in, where we're not responsible for being in charge of our own lives, where we're not trying to seize control for our own purposes, out of our own initiative. And this is what, to me, has been so discouraging about the way I've seen so many in the American church operating over these last ten years is it has been with that desire to control it has been with that instinct to try to seize Power in order to protect ourselves, in order to provide power for ourselves, and in order to build up defenses to protect what we value. And when we're doing that, then there's not a possibility that we would be people who follow in the way of Jesus, of laying down our lives for others, of of truly loving our neighbors. And so I think what what the Sabbath posture, what the Sabbath vision does, is it it kind of bursts, the imaginative bubble that so much of Christianity has been caught in the imaginative bubble that that we are supposed to be in charge of the culture, that we are supposed to be, those who seize power in order to build a world out of our own resources that serves us, Uh, when in fact, what what Christ has called us to is a very different life, and it's a life that he modeled for us. I talk about as I teach on this of Christ's. Christ came as the representative of Sabbath, and you just see that in the way that he lived his life in a very non-anxious, very non-defensive posture, fully entrusting himself to his father. And I think we are being called by the spirit to to really walk in the way of Christ. But to do that, if we're going to do that in the the American church context, there's a lot, a lot that we're going to have to give up. And there's a lot of the way that we've been formed to think about our life in the world that that we're going to have to repent of, and we're going to have to lay down so that the Spirit of God might, might renew us in this, in this mission.

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Terri Elton: So I'm curious, you talked about your actual the root of this started in your work with Bonhoeffer. Yeah. Well, Bonhoeffer knows a few things about being church in difficult times and trying to literally put a different view of church right in front of people in his time. What insights can you give us from that, from that work into our time today?

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Joel Lawrence: Yeah. So I think, I think Bonhoeffer is really fascinating around this, but I also think we have to go to the to the right bit of Bonhoeffer. And here's what I mean by this. A lot of times, you know, if you're in the Bonhoeffer world teaching about Bonhoeffer, I go to places and I and I teach seminars and this and that, and a lot of what people want to ask about is the did he do the right thing? Right? In the 1940s, when he when he became the the, you know, secret agent, when he when he was working for the British government with from within Germany. So it kind of sparks all these what I call the Bonhoeffer as case study, ethical case study conversations. Right? Did he do the right thing? And we come to Bonhoeffer and we kind of make him an ethical case study. I actually think what's more instructive about Bonhoeffer is not the Bonhoeffer of the 1940s. It's the Bonhoeffer of the 1930s, because what Bonhoeffer was engaging with in the 1930s, for those who know the story, even the outlines of the story, they say Hitler comes to power in January of 1933. Uh, Bonhoeffer sees pretty early on the direction of travel here. He saw very quickly where this was going, and he was looking around, and he was seeing many people in the churches in Germany were attracted to to Hitler's vision. They were attracted to, to Hitler's vision of a strong Germany, of a Germany that has the Lebensraum, the living room, the Germany that would take its rightful place after the humiliation of World War One and the Treaty of Versailles, that this was a very motivating factor for many in the church. Many leaders in the church, including in the Confessing Church, which was the group of pastors that formed in 1933, 34, 35 and were against Hitler's takeover of the functions of the church. But many were not necessarily against Hitler's vision. Right? So they had the the Lutheran king, two kingdoms theology. They were concerned that that that Hitler wasn't staying in his lane of being the head of the state, but he was he was reaching into the church and wanting to implement nazified bishops into the church. So they were they were rejecting that. But many weren't weren't rejecting Hitler's ideology. Hitler's vision. So what what Bonhoeffer locked into pretty early was his deep concern that the vast majority of the leaders in the church and the churches in Germany were taking this either pro-Nazi, like just full on they were buying into it, or the ones who were resisting were resisting out of a defensive posture to protect their own power to to protect the church's place in society. And they had good theological reasons for doing that. But their geopolitical imagination didn't enable them to see what was happening and how the church was being taken by the state, not merely through the functions or the offices but but the ideology. And so I think we're where Bonhoeffer has a lot to say to us today. And I, I always, I always do many caveats with this, because you go to the Hitler card and you start making comparisons between Hitler and today and, you know, it gets it can get pretty testy in those kinds of conversations. But what I would say is, I think there are some real parallels between Germany of the 1930s and America of the 2020s, not simply on the kind of totalitarian, authoritarian, however we want to talk about that politics side. But for the church, we have been deeply shaped by a particular political imagination. And my concern is if our drive is to protect that political imagination, then we are going to find ourselves in the same kind of position that the church of the 1930s found itself in, which is pretty easy takeover by the ideologies of the state, and any defense or any rejection of that is coming out of more of a defensive posture for our own purposes, not out of a drive to truly be the church that loves our neighbor. So it was in this time that Bonhoeffer's writing, Discipleship and Life together and really reflecting on what would it look like for the church to lay down its life for the neighbor. And he just saw a church that was completely unprepared to do that.

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Terri Elton: Super helpful, I like that.

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Dwight Zscheile: Well, so many of our listeners and viewers are leading local churches. And so what are some practical ways churches can, you know, foster unity, um, lean into a kind of identity for the church that is faithful amidst these really powerful political and cultural forces you're describing?

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Joel Lawrence: Yeah. So some of this comes out of my own personal experience shepherding a church, a couple of different churches in this season. A lot of it comes out of conversations that I'm having with pastors. Um, I said this. I was speaking at an event a few weeks ago, and I said to the pastors who were there, I said, basically, for the foreseeable future, you need to turn most of what you do as a pastor into an ecclesiology course. Um, I don't know.

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Terri Elton: I just want to pause there. You know, like that could keep Dwight and I in business, too.

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Joel Lawrence: There you go. That's what this is all about, right? That's what. That's what we're doing here. So, yeah, I. I just have come to a deep conviction that we just don't know what it means to be the church in some real, fundamental ways. And again, I don't want to paint with too broad of brushstrokes here. Um, and we could get pretty nuanced in this conversation. But but as I look around in various different directions, I just see a lack of a really deeply formed ecclesiology in churches. And I mentioned this a little bit earlier. I think one of my concerns is I feel like the American church has kind of borrowed our social identity from the state. We've we've borrowed our social imagination from the state. And so now when we see the kind of cultural polarization, cultural division, it's no wonder that the church is divided culturally, is is polarized politically in the way that the culture is, because we've we've taken on the culture's vision of of society. We've taken on the culture's imagination. And I think that there is a tremendous opportunity here for pastors. It's going to be hard work. It's not going to be solved before this next upcoming election. It's going to take a lot of time and a lot of patience and a lot of perseverance. But I think we're at a moment in the church in America where we have to really start getting very serious about identifying ways that we've been mis formed and how an ecclesial vision can come in and do some of that significant work of reformation that that we're desperate for as, as the people of God. And so I think that there's I think there's a tremendous opportunity. I think there's a tremendous opportunity here. But as I said, it's going to take pastors, leaders who are committed for the long haul. Who are not looking for easy answers or programmatic fixes to the things that are facing the church. But but who will do that? That hard patient work, the challenging work of of discipling their congregations. And and as I said, I just think, I think so much of what we need to be doing today is just over and over and over again, teaching the church what it means to be the church and what comes alongside of that is we also, if we're programming the church to be the church, we also have to deprogram what has come in that is shaping our identity in ways that have us, I think, captured to the political pattern of the age.

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Terri Elton: It's really interesting, as you were talking about, that. I was with some friends this weekend and they were we were talking about what was happening in our culture, Everyone in that conversation was of one camp politically and and reflecting on different elections. And I just kind of paused and I said, I've really had to get my theology in check, because over the years I've been perplexed by humanity, and I have found myself actually believing if one person, one or the other, we would save ourselves or not. Right. And I'm like, I'm asking politics to do what I profess God has already done. And it turned the corner to exactly what you were saying. Is that what does it mean to be a person of faith in this time and place, with or without the support of government or political leaders or agencies or business, right? Go any part of our society. And what really was fun for me in that conversation was to see them opening an imagination, like you had said about, oh, what does it mean to be a person of faith, to love God and my neighbor because they literally cared about deeply about their neighbor, and they just only saw the church structure or the political structure? I'll use those two as the only means of ways of actually loving their neighbor, rather than the call of them. All right. Of us all.

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Joel Lawrence: Yeah. And I think what you just said is, is so important because I do think we've been formed to believe that our engagement with the world needs to take place through these certain structures that we have become so accustomed to the the structures of the state, the structures of the church. I think what might be happening in our time. And when I put my more optimistic hat on, I think what what might be happening in our time is that the Spirit of God is prompting us to recognize that, yeah, those are particular avenues. Um, and and I don't want to discard those avenues, but we've been captured by them. And I would say particularly we've been captured by political processes as the means by which we engage the culture. And I just think that the spirit has there's so many other resources, opportunities, creativity that the spirit can bring to to place the church in positions where, where we can influence the culture. But it might look like we don't have political power anymore. It might necessitate in some ways, that we lose political power in order for us to really begin to seize on and live out what the spirit, what the spirit might have for us as a way to be present in the world. And and that, to me is where I start to get I start to get excited. In the midst of all the the difficulty and the confusion and the drama and anxiety and all that comes with all that we're living through. But I think that there is something exciting that that is happening. And it's, it's it's still in small pockets. I'm seeing it in certain places, but I'm starting to see, I think, a deep sense that, hey, what's gotten us here is not going to take us into the future, and we need to turn to God, and we need to turn to the spirit in new ways if we're going to be freed from the formation that we have received in order that we might maybe step into a new reality of what it means to be God's church in ways that would be profound and impactful. But that impact may not look like what we think impact looks like.

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Terri Elton: So what would you say to church leaders that want to do we actually equip their members to be agents of reconciliation, not relying only on the structures, right, but in their daily interactions?

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Joel Lawrence: Well, I think the what your conversation with that group of people that you talked to, you talked about recently is a is a great example. I, I wish I could write the book that has all the programs that we need to just kind of program our way out of where we are. Um, I don't think that that book exists because I don't think programming our way out is the way forward. I think these kinds of reflections about what are we trusting in? It starts with us doing some self-examination, asking God to examine us. What? What really am I trusting in? I preached it at my local church a few weeks ago, and I ended with that question. What really are we trusting in? Like do a deep heart examination. Where are my fears? Where are my anxieties? Where are those coming from? And what does that tell me about what I'm deeply trusting in? I think I think a pastors can be doing that, and then having the courage to be sharing that with their congregation, and then courageously stepping into conversations as the opportunity is there to guide our congregations, to place these kinds of pose, these kinds of questions for the people in our in our congregations, create spaces where we can be having these dialogues, which aren't spaces of who you're going to vote for, or which way are you going to vote, which are spaces that go deeper than that to some of these core questions of of ecclesiology, of salvation, as you mentioned, we ought not be asking any political leader. We ought not be trusting them, that if we just get the right person in office, then the world will go the way that we want it to go. That's revealing a misformed theological ecclesial imagination. So I know it's I wish, like I said, I could give step one, two and three. I think it's more complicated than that. And also maybe a little simpler than that. I think it's a deep examination of our own hearts. And then as pastors shepherding our churches into this kind of, of examination in, in our community life and in their personal lives.

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Dwight Zscheile: So, Joel, as I listened to this, I'm, I'm brought to mind the just the unraveling of the Christendom ethos in American society and that whole legacy that's so been so definitive in shaping much of the American church. And the Holy Spirit is doing something amidst this unraveling. And I'm thinking of James Davison Hunter's recent book, Democracy and Solidarity, talking about that, how that that narrative animated and centered in many ways, you know, American society. But now what you're left with is exhaustion amidst its unraveling and then a kind of will to power, you know, authoritarianism on left and right that's emerged. And so, so amidst all that unraveling, talk to us about hope for the church's future in this kind of climate of exhaustion, a will to power which we see on all sides. And the church is tempted to simply join those battles. But. But where? Where are you finding hope? And what hope would you lift up for our listeners and viewers?

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Joel Lawrence: So, um, a couple of things there. I'm I'm actually very hopeful. Um, I'm not hopeful that we're going to get through the next few weeks, few months, few years in a way that's going to be easy. Uh, I as I look at what's coming down the pike and, and Hunter talks about this some in his book there, there don't seem to be easy resets in front of us as the American culture, the way that that kind of cultural solidarity that that is to undergird any community of people if there's going to be some form of unity. The way that that has been broken makes it a challenging season ahead for the American culture. Um, so I'm not my hope doesn't reside in there's going to be an easy reset, and we're going to kind of move forward past this election, and then everything's going to be fine coming out of that. My hope resides in the pattern of the Holy Spirit, who who works in these kinds of times of disintegration to build new things and to bring new things to life. My hope is in lots of conversations that I am having with pastors who. aren't being depicted in the media, who aren't known broadly, but who are deeply, deeply concerned for their congregations. And they're wanting to shepherd their congregations towards a new experience of the spirit, a new living reality of the gospel, who have come to recognize that ways that that they've been pastoring or ways that we have been we've been living our lives as the church are not sustainable and have brought us to this point where we've been contributors to some of this cultural disintegration. And out of that, there's a repentance, there's a new spirit, there's a longing for God to do something that that we can't do in and of our own selves. So I don't think we have an easy path ahead of us, either culturally or ecclesially. But my hope, my my confidence is in the work that the Spirit of God has done. We can look through history and see in times of disintegration, the spirit has gotten Ahold of certain women and men's hearts and has led them and guided them to be shepherds of the church, to seek to seek a new way of embodying the life of Christ in the world. And I'm seeing desire for that and longing for that. And I'm seeing people who are committed to leading the church through the challenging times that that we have before us.

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Terri Elton: That seems like a beautiful place to end with the hope of the spirit. And I just want to thank you for taking time today to be with us, to share your insights in this really challenging time and beautiful time to be God's Church. So thanks, Joel.

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Joel Lawrence: Happy to do it. Great to have the conversation. Thanks.

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Dwight Zscheile: And to our audience. Thank you for joining us on this episode of pivot. To help spread the word about pivot, please like and subscribe. If you're catching us on YouTube or if you're listening, head to Apple Podcasts and leave a review. It really helps.

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Terri Elton: And as always, our best compliment is if you like this episode of the Pivot podcast to share it with a friend. So for this week, this is Terry Elton and Dwight Zscheile signing off. We'll see you next week.

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Faith+Lead voiceover: The Pivot Podcast is a production of Luther Seminary's Faith+Lead. Faith+Lead is an ecosystem of theological resources and training designed to equip Christian disciples and leaders to follow God into a faithful future. Learn more at faithlead.org.

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